Journalism has not changed significantly over the last few decades. Decisions about what news to cover are, for the most part, still made by a small group of editors and reporters who develop news stories by speaking to community leaders, topic experts, government officials, and organization spokespeople. Such approaches for developing news stories do not take full advantage of two-way mass-communication tools, such as electronic communication networks, that have become available over the same time span.
Journalists typically tap a relatively limited source pool in preparing their reports. Tools such as open forums, web logs (blogs) and user-written web sites are examples of electronic communication applications that have not been fully exploited and properly utilized by journalism organizations for widening source networks to improve the quality and credibility of journalism. These types of electronic communication tools generally elicit public opinion, rather than information, and have no processes for systematic mining, vetting and managing of sources and information. Journalism organizations mainly use them more for entertainment (e.g., instant polls, citizen stories) and op-ed than for advancing fact-based news reporting. In some cases, journalists attempting to use these electronic communication networks as a source of seemingly news-worthy information have later discovered that the information gleaned, as well as the sources, are not credible. While electronic communication networks have occasionally been used by journalists to expand access to information and ideas, these uses have not been managed in a sustainable way to maintain source relationships and avoid confusing unverified and uncorroborated information with credible information.
Sharing of information over the Internet has demonstrated that knowledgeable people in the public domain can be better informed than reporters about certain aspects of news-worthy stories. Mainstream journalism organizations can produce more accurate, insightful and relevant coverage by drawing on that knowledge. The future of journalism is largely dependent upon the art of identifying, creating and tapping networks of those reliable and knowledgeable people who might not have otherwise stepped forward to offer the information. The participation and insight of these individuals will enrich the content of the stories and help identify emerging trends, overlooked stories or information and new story ideas. Further, journalism organizations can improve the relevance of their coverage by tapping public sources to better understand the assumptions, thought processes, accepted wisdom, and misconceptions of the audience.
The future success of journalism is dependent upon the extent to which organizations can establish and maintain effective, communicative relationships with the wide source networks that new technology, especially the Internet, allows for the first time. These source networks are most useful when the computer-based tools, technology and processes are available to create, manage, vet and mine these networks to find high-caliber sources on any given subject. Therefore, tools for managing these relationships and interactions are needed.